What does it mean to be a born again Christian?
Nicodemus came to Jesus with credentials — a teacher, a religious leader, a man of standing — and Jesus cut across all of it with one requirement: a person must be born again to see the kingdom of God. The phrase has become common language, but the commentators press two questions that give it weight: why is a new birth necessary at all, and what actually changes in someone who has it?
Why it is a requirement, not a suggestion
The reason for the demand lies deeper than a person's record of wrongdoing. One writer traces it to the source that produces the acts:
Edward DennettWhy then must a man be born again? The answer to this question brings us to a most important part of our subject. We have already shown that all men are sinners; but it is not only that they are sinners, they have an evil, corrupt, depraved nature; and this incurably corrupt nature is the tree which produces all the evil fruits of sin. The acts of sin reveal the character of the nature; and this nature is totally unfit for God's presence.
That is why self-improvement is not an alternative route. Jesus' words to Nicodemus rule out any attempt to upgrade what is already there:
C. H. MackintoshDo what you will with flesh — with nature — and you cannot alter or improve it. Nothing could change flesh into spirit. You may raise it to the rank of Pharisee, a ruler of the Jews, a master in Israel — and you could hardly make it higher — but it will be flesh all the same.
Something new, not something repaired
Commentators point out that the word Jesus used means "anew" or "from the beginning," and that this shapes the whole idea:
Hamilton SmithThe word does not imply a modification or change of the old nature, but the giving of a nature that is entirely new from its beginning... Born anew does not mean that the Holy Spirit works on the natural man, as if He were turning a bad state into a good state, but that something entirely new is worked in the man.
What is given is not an improved version of the person but a life that comes from Christ Himself:
C. H. MackintoshRegeneration is not a change of the old nature, but the introduction of a new; it is the planting of the nature or life of the Second Adam by the working of the Holy Spirit, founded on the finished redemption of Christ, and fully in keeping with the sovereign will of God. The moment a sinner believes in his heart and confesses with his mouth the Lord Jesus, he becomes the owner of a new life, and that life is Christ.
Who does the work
No one arranges his own birth, and the same holds here. One writer quotes a miner's blunt summary and adds the ground on which God acts:
A. J. PollockNew birth is clearly God's sovereign act. As the Durham miner put it bluntly, "No man can born himself again." And yet God must have a righteous ground for this, and He finds it in the death of Christ. A new heart, a new spirit is given.
The means God uses is His word, carried home by the Spirit — and commentators are careful here to separate that from the ceremony of baptism:
William KellyWhat the unconverted soul needs is a new nature, or, as the Lord explains it, to be "born of water and of the Spirit." It is the word of God, pictured in this way and applied by the power of the Holy Spirit to the soul, which is the meaning of the passage. Baptism may picture what is conveyed by it, but it is a figure of a reality.
How it shows
Where the new life exists, it behaves like the One it came from. Writers on John's first letter point to a settled pattern rather than occasional good moments:
F. B. HoleThose who are born of God are the children of God, and they may be recognised by the doing of righteousness. The doing is something habitual and characteristic. It is not that they do righteousness now and again, but that they practise it as the habit of their lives. They are far from perfect in it — only One was that. Still, as born of God they necessarily have His nature.
A second mark stands beside the first, and together they identify the family:
James BoydOf this family there are two features which unfailingly declare their descent, and these are righteousness and love... In 1 John 2:29 we read, "everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him"; and in chapter 4:7, "whoever loves has been born of God."
A relationship that holds
Because the life given is eternal life, the new birth is not a change that can be reversed:
Leslie M. GrantNot that the old, sinful nature is removed; but the new nature is now the ruling one: it gives a new outlook, new desires, new motives, though the old exists alongside it. New birth gives a new life, called "eternal life," a life completely pure and untainted, which death can never touch... If it could be lost, it could never have been called "eternal."
Summary
- Need — The problem is not only what a person does but the nature behind it, and that nature is unfit for God's presence.
- Impossibility — Flesh cannot be turned into spirit; religion, rank and reform leave a person exactly what he was.
- Gift — New birth is God's sovereign act, resting on the death of Christ, giving a nature that is new from its very beginning.
- Means — God works by His word applied by the Spirit; the picture of "water" is the word, not the ceremony of baptism.
- Evidence and permanence — Righteousness practised and love for God's children mark the newborn, and the life given is eternal, so the relationship never breaks.